


Comfort Is a Far Off Country

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-29
Updated: 2008-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:18:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For him, she will play at being the strong one. (post 6.16 'Drought Conditions')</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort Is a Far Off Country

**Author's Note:**

> For lifeasanamazon.

It's not an easy night. There are no easy nights anymore. Hardly even an hour passes without something that tugs on her conscience; turns something in her belly to a buzz of static white tension.

But for him, today - _tonight_, she will try to play at being the calm one: soothing hands, a kiss on his temple. More, if he wants it.

He says he can still see the pattern of white fairylights in her hair when he looks at her, and she doesn't know why he would keep on looking, except that one reason, which they never speak of.

When she tugs his clothes off - gets him finally out of that dark jacket and pale shirt, stained with unruly tears and the traces of his anger - she realises that age has hurt him less than she expected. Less than she feared. She is aware of her fingers shaking as they undo buttons and knots, but if he notices it doesn't seem to matter. His face is twisted, pained: hating the request he hasn't even made. She wants to ask him if he remembers that she promised, a long time ago, but stays silent. It would only hurt more, she fears.

There is no grey yet in the hair on his chest. It curls like the hair does on the back of his neck, downier, softer to her fingers. It makes its way down his belly (whose curve is smaller now, which sight hurts her in a way she does not understand) in a long arc, a twisted line, black in the half-light.

He raises an eyebrow at her, daring a comment or a joke. She shakes her head, though she is smiling already, but this is not a night for joking.

She traces the line of hair with her thumb, then the back of her right index finger over the hollow at his neck, up and round, into his beard, into his hair. It's slick to touch, wet almost, with something that smells like lemons almost, or something like them; a dark dash of citrus. She leans in, takes a breath full of it, then rests her head against the side of his, sighing, tired already, with all of it. With everything that has crumbled around them.

When she looks up at his face, his eyes are wet again. He is blinking the tears back, furiously, squinting as if from the sun and trying to dodge out of her gaze.

She whispers his name into his ear, then kisses it, softly. He pulls away but she pulls him back, holds him, still, smoothing her hands over the start of his struggle.

_Toby_. She almost pleads, almost. His is not the only heart broken tonight.

He turns his head and before she can blink brings his hands up to her cheeks, and kisses her. Open-mouthed, asking without waiting for an answer, violence colouring the edges of his embrace and a white static crackle at every place their bodies touch. She gasps for breath, snatching a look at him: his pupils are wide, black, and there are two streaks of bright red slashed across his cheekbones. He can give up hurt to fury, she knows, and that is easier for him than softly spoken words and care-taking.

But she can see, still, in little echoes of darkness, his loss written onto his body. A tear in him, not to be healed but to be added to all the others, fraying now; unravelling. She presses her fingertips against him, to the places which seem vulnerable: the base of his neck, the centre line of his chest, the opening of his mouth. Her fingers slip inside, between his teeth and he bites them before he even thinks. She winces, but does not pull back. She understood the deal when she began.

But she wonders, in the hour or two that follow, if she has seen him go mad with grief.

She can feel a storm coming, a tide set to sweep through their house; destruction, to be the companion of death. She shivers, trying not to touch him, not to hurt him any further, with her premonitions, which she is sure thrill through her skin like the promise of thunder.

She hears him moan, a little. A cough of noise, indistinct.

"CJ?"

"I'm sorry. It's okay, Toby, it's fine. Go back to sleep."

"Tell me," he says, his voice as soft as he has ever made it, the hint of a smile in how he says: "We have no secrets now."

His body turns, curls around hers: narrow hips to the small of her back and his hand slowly tracing the line of her arm. She bows her head to stop the tears coming.

"It's okay, Toby, I ... I don't -- "

He kisses the back of her neck. His beard rasps on her skin. She takes a sharp intake of breath. He rests his face into the curve of her neck, nestles there, like a child might. Kisses are softer now. He is gentle, coming down from the high places of his sorrow. He shifts closer.

"We'll make it," he says, in a tone which does not promise or defy, yet is neither a statement of fact. She holds on, paradoxically, to the tiny notes of doubt in his voice.

"Our reach should exceed our grasp, mi amore."

He makes a sound which, for a moment, she does not register as a laugh.

Then, after a minute, "Can I stay?"

There seems no correct answer to give him; this question means more than it admits and has also a hint of prophecy, a strange strain of longing for what he knows he will never have. If she turned now she knows she would find his face is open and hurting, emotion written there like bad love poetry. She doesn't think she can stand that, and she doesn't want to cry again tonight.

So she only strokes his arm where it lies across her stomach. His skin is warm; her fingers cool. There is no static now, no buzz of want and pain, but something quieter; something she recognises.

"Toby?"

"Yeah," he says, in a whisper, "I know." He kisses the back of her neck again, still soft, like he is asking her to forgive him. She knows he will find other ways to ask the same thing in the coming days, and she will fend off apologies he shouldn't be making then. Tonight, she is quiet.

Tonight she shifts against in him in her sleep and it doesn't seem strange that he is there, that he is so still and silent, that he has given himself to her.


End file.
